Brownie Oxford and the Barren Woods Blunder Brownie Bk 3

Chapter 1

'I am Bonnie Brown, ' I told myself as I used the flat iron to straighten my curls. The brown contacts were already in my eyes covering up the green. As strange as it felt to look at myself in the mirror and see straight hair instead of curls and brown eyes instead of my normal green, I knew it was a necessity.

Especially now.

After finding out that I could converse with the spirits of the dead, not through any crystal ball mummery, but in much the same manner as people everywhere talked to other people, the NCS, or National Clandestine Services, a rather shadowy branch of the CIA, sent someone calling himself Swift to recruit me into helping them out by questioning a host of unsavory dead. After seven years as his asset, I gained a wide variety of nightmares and a host of scars.

When someone named Matheson who possessed green eyes, curly brown hair, abilities similar to mine and claiming to be my uncle appeared, wanting to kill me so he could perform some sort of ritual to add my power to his, Swift hid me with a friend of his named Paul in a small town called Mayenfield. Admittedly, Swift didn't know Matheson was my uncle, as I was raised in the Riverdale Girl's Home, had no known family and he never got a look at Matheson to spot the physical similarities.

By now I figured he managed to find some sort of photo identification as Swift managed to find Cecil Matheson's house. I had the feeling once he found the photo, he would quickly put things together. Swift was many things, dumb wasn't one of them. When I left though, he just thought Matheson wanted to have me raise someone from the dead for some reason that neither of us knew.

Yeah, I lied to him.

After a necromancer showdown between Matheson and myself in the Mayenfield cemetery, Matheson died and I ran. I slipped out of town quietly and hid from Paul, Swift and the NCS. With the assistance of the dead I no longer needed the pills Dr. Harding, the doctor they routinely used to stich me up after something went wrong, created to keep my liver's bilirubin levels steady and my stomach from having constant upheavals.

With the assistance of Avery, Matheson's butler, who apparently helped my parents get me away from Cecil Matheson, I had a new identity. He made me Bonnie Brown instead of Brownie Oxford and as he spent my entire lifetime growing the identity, it had all of the background I needed to look real and not like I magically popped up from nowhere.

From there I started out on a new life. I drove across the country, found an apartment, set up a small sewing business and was accepted into the local university's fashion design program. I made friends with my neighbors and actually started to have a real life. I was well on my way to normal, when everything went pear shaped.

It turned out, my neighbors were serial killers.

Yeah. Serial killers.

They managed to kill fourteen people and as luck would have it, they buried their victims in cemeteries.

Yeah. Cemeteries.

Just my luck huh?

News spread and brought Swift, now calling himself Agent Mike Johnson, to the city. He actually apprehended my three neighbors in my apartment when one of them decided to make me victim number fifteen. He then informed my building manager, Nicole, that this was his last case, that he was retiring, taking a job with a consultant firm and apparently moving here to date her.

I finished straightening my hair and unplugged the flat iron. When he arrived Swift adopted a southern accent and exuded charm. The tall, blonde charmer swept Nicole off her feet. The fact that I thought of Swift as a cross between a surfer and a praying mantis made me a little creeped out at the thought of anyone dating him.

I tried not to dwell on the details.

The kitchen apprehension occurred the first day of my first fall semester as a fashion design student. Now we were two weeks into the spring semester and the media's interest was finally waning. I was certain that once the trial actually came to court interest would once again flare. Somehow, I thought that a full confession from all three of the murderers involved would speed things along.

Silly me.

Thinking things were taking forever to wrap up, I looked into it, since oddly enough, the length of time between arrest and trial was not covered in my junior high civics class, or if it was I was sick that day and probably have a doctor's note to confirm it.

In my random research I found that capitol cases, i.e. cases where someone was murdered, could easily take up to two years to make it to trial. The lawyers from both sides had to get their ducks in a row and then there were back and forth appeals and a host of other legal bits to get through before the trial could even begin.

And that was with one killer and one victim.

Without the Feds getting involved.